‘Isn’t he a dear?’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick panted. ‘Don’t you feel he’s somebody awfully special?’

‘He seems a nice man,’ Troy answered and try as she might, she couldn’t help flattening her voice.

‘I do think we all ought to make a special effort. I get awfully worked-up about it. When people go on like Mr Pollock, you know. I tackled Mr Pollock about his attitude. I do that, you know, I do tackle people. I said: “Just because he’s got another pigmentation,” I said, “why should you think he’s different.” They’re not different. You do agree, don’t you?’

‘No,’ Troy said. ‘I don’t. They are different. Profoundly.’

‘Oh! How can you say so?’

‘Because I think it’s true. They are different in depth from Anglo-Saxons. So are Slavs. So are Latins.’

‘Oh! If you mean like that,’ she said, and broke into ungainly laughter. ‘Oh, I see. Oh, yes. Then you do agree that we should make a special effort.’

‘Look, Miss Rickerby-Carrick—’

‘I say, do call me Hay.’

‘Yes—well—thank you. I was going to say that I don’t think Dr Natouche would enjoy special efforts. Really, I don’t.’

‘You seem to get on with him like a house on fire,’ Miss Rickerby-Carrick pointed out discontentedly.

‘Do I? Well, I find him an interesting man.’

‘There you are, you see!’ she cried, proclaiming some completely inscrutable triumph, and a longish silence ensued.

They heard the motorcycle start up and cross the bridge and listened to the diminishment of sound as it made off in the direction of Norminster.

One by one the other passengers straggled up the field. Mr Pollock behind the rest, swinging his built-up boot. The Hewsons were all set-about with cameras while Caley Bard had a box slung from his shoulder and carried a lepidopterist’s net.

So that, Troy thought, was what it was. When everybody was assembled the Hewsons took photographs of the wapentake by itself and with their fellow-travellers sitting self-consciously round it. Mr Lazenby compared it without, Troy felt, perceptible validity, to an aboriginal place of assembly in the Australian outback. Mr Pollock read his brochure and then stared with a faint look of disgust at the original.

Caley Bard joined Troy. ‘So this is where you lit off to,’ he murmured. ‘I got bailed up by that extraordinary lady. She wants to get up a let’s-be-sweet-to-Natouche movement.’

‘I know. What did you say?’

‘I said that as far as I am concerned, I consider I’m as sweet to Natouche as he can readily stomach. Now, tell me all about the wapentake. I’m allergic to leaflets and I’ve forgotten what the Skipper said. Speak up, do.’

Troy did not bother to react to this piece of cheek. She said: ‘So you’re a lepidopterist?’